In addition to the traditional backhoe threat, as the price of copper increased so has the threat of people stealing telephone trunk cables containing copper wire.
Indeed. Here's a story from five years back: [http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2001/03/02_fiber.html} Fiber optic cut disrupts network access for hill facilities Vandals severed wires in effort to take copper cabling in underground conduit By Cathy Cockrell, Public Affairs 02 March 2001 | An underground fiber optic cable connecting the campus with facilities in the Berkeley hills was severed during the early morning hours of Tuesday, Feb. 27. The incident disrupted network connections for hundreds of employees at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Hall of Science, the Samuel L. Silver Space Sciences Laboratory and other Strawberry Canyon operations. Campus officials believe the cut was the work of thieves, who forced open a manhole cover on the hillside above Memorial Stadium to remove high-voltage copper cabling from an underground conduit. "The fiber cable apparently was in the way; they just chopped it out," said Berkeley lab Manager of Communications Facilities Ed Ritenour, who spent much of the next few days "running up and down the hillside in a lot of mud" to oversee repairs. ...